Agony in Afghanistan
by MetalWolfMelody
Summary: The war came back home with Colby, but it's trapped in his mind, where no one else can see. He suffers an agony that only he can feel, and lie after lie rolls of his tongue. His mind is suffering a terrible disease, and he can do nothing except keep silent.


The rifle was Afghanistan.

Every inch of the stock was painted over in black, and when he let his fingers run over it, he could feel the same color scorched by desert heat. The same aluminum alloy pressed a hundred times over, the same weapon profile in the hands of every American soldier, slung over their back. He held them gingerly, knowing that the compact, lightweight design was nothing more than a ruse. When this rifle was on his back with a thirty round magazine, it didn't weigh seven and a half pounds. It weighed the same as twenty or thirty lives, maybe more. It weighed as much as the enemies it mowed down. It weighed the same as the children dismembered by bombs cities away. That is how much the rifle weighed, and no matter what he did to scrape away the memories, they clung to him like molten lead.

The sun was Afghanistan.

The scorching sun that should have been welcome on a spring day, but to his bright blue eyes, it was anything but. This sun made it warm for spring. Spring in that miserable place was always warmer than home, always brought sweat to his brow before summer had even whispered its deadly promises. There was no way to escape the sun in that barren land, forgive beside a Humvee or crouched behind a tumbling wall. The shade was hardly reprieve from the agony of warmth, a warmth that he had never loved. With every warm sunny day, he was plunged back into the memories of watching for enemy movements keenly, trying to keep the sweat from dripping into his eyes.

The scent of stale cigarettes was Afghanistan.

No one else knew, but cheap cigarettes were as good as money when it came to that place. The soldiers craved anything that wasn't either dirt or lead. They craved women, they craved rich foods, they craved both drugs and alcohol. He had laid on his back under the canopy of the sky, watching smoke drift lazily towards the heavens from the man lying beside him. He had never taken a liking to the cancerous habits, but the smell always lingered. It clung to each soldier wherever he went, whether they smoked or not. No one seemed to mind. Perhaps it was because they too were craving, and even the sickly scent of nicotine clinging to their teammates body was enough. Perhaps it was because the smell of smoke was one of the only scents that seemed to sting stronger than the scent of gunpowder.

The gleam of silver was Afghanistan.

With the sun shining like a beacon in the sky, any soldier who wore his tags proudly around his neck acted as a medallion themselves. The sun paid no mind to what it was, the silver reflections shone like gems around the base, out in the desert, up in the rocks. He himself had tucked his tags away, feeling their coolness press up against his chest, the beaded chain pulling around his neck when he fidgeted. That was where they had belonged for him- hidden away until they were needed, which he hoped they never were. But there were the others, men that he knew as brothers, that opened their shirts and wore them proudly. It was as though they were proud of the fact that they had these tags, like collars on a dog, to say when they were lost. He knew the sentiment, the proof that they belonged, proof that they were alive, proof that they were human. All in that flash of silver under an Afghan sun. He had always tucked his tags away.

The sound of thunder was Afghanistan.

There was little true thunder in that place, and that was one of his greatest laments. Before he had gone off, before he had pledged his life for the cause and sworn himself to the life of a desert creature, the thunder was something he had hungered for. Nothing had stirred his heart more than the prospect of a storm on the horizon, dark clouds welling in the sky. The only thunder that filled the air in that place was the thunder of explosions, death and fire in their wake. Thunder in Afghanistan meant pain. It meant suffering. Now the thunder shook him to his bones, and made him stir when he tried to sleep. He wondered if he would ever hear thunder the same way again.

The flag was Afghanistan.

Even in that place, home was everywhere. The red, the white, the blue, draped across anything that he could have dreamed. It had been flown on poles, strung high up on base, the rippling fabric praying that it could kiss the sky. The flags were stuck on arms, on bunks, on tents, on flasks, on canteens, on rifles. There wasn't a square foot of solid ground that didn't scream America's name. That was as close to home as they could get, and would get. He knew that it was a claim, a statement, a brand emblazoned on stones with paint, on clothes with patches, on the sky with flags. It was a statement, and it was a sweet release at first. Then it was bitter. Patriotism was half of the blood in his veins, the words of praise for a country he loved always on the tip of his tongues. But this love turned to lust as he wished for home soil, and then lust turned to bitterness as the flags turned brown as they were torn apart by dust. The flags were everywhere, and the flags draped the boxes of the men that got to go home before him. The flags were death.

The sound of boots on pavement was Afghanistan.

Rubber soles hardly made a whisper on pavement, and even less in the dust, but he could hear it well. He had worn the boots himself, shaking the sand out every night, though the efforts were futile. The boots touched the burning black pavement, and they pressed down on the gas pedal when the sound of bombs grew near. They left marks in the sand, and they chaffed when he wasn't careful. The laces on his boots had always come undone, and he had never known why, but he laced them again and again. It felt like he had walked a thousand miles in those boots, and every time he heard that gentle tread he swore his legs ached like he had walked clear back to the war. The soles had worn down, the tread had been rubbed away from the wear, and they were always full of sand. When he heard the sound of those boots, he could feel the sand beneath his heel, and the sand between his toes.

The never ending string of nightmares was Afghanistan.

They haunted him then, and they haunted him now. Hours couldn't quantify the sleep that filled his mind. There were just bits and pieces between the agony, the suffering. The sight of fire crackling around the edges of his vision, the itching of his uniform against his color. The color of the sky as bombs exploded, as dust shot towards the blue and turned the whole world brown. The crumbling buildings, the crying of children, the sound of gunfire peppering the air. They were his world then, and they were his world of dreams. His dreamscape was a desert landscape, the solidarity in his mind nothing more than the devil grabbing him by the neck and dragging him back to hell. He tossed and turned in his bed, on a mattress too soft, between sheets to warm, and with a deafening silence in the background that his imagination filled with horror. The sleepless nights, the bouts of terror, waking up drenched in sweat from another dream drenched in blood, those were what defined his nights.

Home was Afghanistan.

He could not escape the things that made up his time in that place. There is not a way to escape the sun, to escape the rain, to escape his own mind. He knew that as soon as he boarded the plane home, looking down at his boots with weary eyes, he knew that he could still feel the sand. The patch with the flag was still on his arm, the tags still clung to his chest, just above his heart. As the wheels left the ground, he knew he was going to be a stranger in a new land once again, he was going to be an outcast that they called a hero. He was going to be in hell again, hell with green grass and rushing rivers and a wonderful blue sky.

Afghanistan was home.

Though he had called himself a man when he had signed the papers saying he was surrendering his body and soul to his country, walked out of that office with a smile on his face and a puffed out chest. He had trained and sweated and told himself that he was nothing less than the best. But when he was in that sand, in that desert heat, watching the body parts of children get scraped off the street, that is both when he became a man, and lost his humanity. He had to shut his eyes at the thought, knowing that he could not think of such a place in that way. It was where he had become all that he was, and lost all that he had been. How was that not home? The place that shaped you, that formed you to be who you were, the place that put all the ideas and thoughts straight into your skull. If that was true, Afghanistan was home. Every little bit of it that he had brought back, he saw it every day, he saw it in everything he did.

And when he looked into the eyes of his friends, of his coworkers, all he could do was pray that they could not see the war flashing in his eyes. He hoped that they didn't see his lips tighten when he touched the plastic stock of the M16, the way he squinted against the oppression of the sun. He hoped with all his might that they didn't see him swallow back a gag whenever the scent of smoke drifted into the office. He tried to hold back his apprehension when a storm was brewing, when fat raindrops dropped from a sky pregnant with terror, and that they didn't see him shake where he stood when thunder made the windows tremble. When the sound of boots with rubber soles made their way down the hall, he tried not to turn around to see who was there to greet him, to see if they had walked as many miles in his shoes, if there was sand following them too. And when he saw the flag, he held himself proud, because he was an American, no matter the bitter taste that washed across his lips.

And when he tried to sleep, he sung softly to himself, though he knew nothing but the hymns that he and his brothers had sung beneath the stars when they were suffering, when they were fearful. Those were the only songs he knew, and the only ones that could free themselves from his lips. Those songs took him back to a place where a soft mattress wasn't beneath his back, where silky sheets didn't envelope his body. Those songs came from a place where there were no luxuries, only blood and death and war. Closing his eyes to escape from those songs only led to the dreams with the bombs and the guns and the fire, a night of tossing and turning that left him exhausted at sunrise.

Afghanistan had made him, and it had broken him. It had sculpted him, and it had destroyed him. He was a better man for it, he knew. But it had given him this disease, this plague inside his mind, and it had trapped him in a war that he could not escape from. It filled his mind with tapes on repeat from those horrors, from a war that washed the sand in blood. It filled his ears with the sounds of crying children, of grenades tearing down stone walls, and of hastily muttered prayers from men who no longer believed. His eyes always saw the sand, saw the browning sky, saw the tears of men who he thought would never let war break them.

It was the disease of war that was tearing him apart from the inside out, and it was the disease that let sobs tear themselves from his throat, and liquid diamonds leak from the corners of his eyes as he cried alone. He told himself that he was no longer a soldier, that he was home, and that he was safe. That's what he told them when they stared at him at work, when he was shaking amidst a fit of anxiety. He told them that he was fine, he had plastered a false smile on his face. He didn't tell them that Afghanistan had stolen his soul.

Colby Granger knew that he was home, he knew that he was among new brothers. But none of them knew that Afghanistan had stolen all he was, and terror refused to give it back. He knew most of all that they were the ones that would carry him through this darkness, but it was the war that left him alone. And when they looked him in the eye, as though they could see the truth, they would hand him the familiar shape of a rifle for the next tactical mission. Nothing ever left his mouth other than positive confirmations. There was no way that he could ever explain his agony, explain his fear, explain the blackness in his mind, and the suffering. There was no way that he could explain that the rifle he held in his hands was Afghanistan.

 **Thank you all so much for reading this story! I haven't wrote something like this in a while. I actually enjoyed thinking about these things, and imagining that Colby suffers a bit more than others think he did (even if it wasn't totally canon). If you'd like to see me write something like this again, or have any suggestions, go ahead and shoot me a PM. Thanks again for giving this story a look :)**


End file.
